Diotimos Reading Desk

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← ExitThe Notebooks of Joseph Joubert, Volume I

Reading language

[On Voltaire.]

November 4.

There is a corner in the brain... Vaulted brains. Brains without a vault and with ceilings, large only from side to side, not in height.

Sunday, November 6.

It is the language of the school, but it is not the language of knowledge.

November […].

The voice aids understanding.

Ah! Even the gnat, if it dances its dance alone, is sad. If there are several, the spectator is cheered. (Ad vivum, in the sun.)

Everything must pass through some straining cloth.

Learned enough (a people) if virtuous enough. Some knowledge, some […]le, some good sense is always attached to virtue.

The funeral chariot of the Borghèse has borne their light coffin.

Knowledge of books for a scholar. What knowledge of the world is for other men.

November […].

Echoes of pleasures, echoes of pains.

As in echoes of sound, through an error of our ear, one is often tempted to place its point of departure at the very point where it arrives. Because in that case, owing to your position, its backflow is more perceptible and noisier to us than its flow. The wind that brings it back, etc.

It is the air that brings back the sound, air backed against something, air compressed and rendered […]rt by some hollow. Neither the stone nor the... reflects the voice back to us; but the air, which they make curved, gathered together, or thickened, and thus motionless (and smooth, even, polished, so to speak). On concave air and convex air, and how every echo is concave. This mirror of the voice, imago vocis.

November […].

Truth (sublime). Metaphysics is her science, mathematics her grammar. Metaphysics [is] to morals what geometry is to mechanics. (Confirmatur.)

Transcendent ones. [They] await the application whose object or subject, or occasion, or necessity has not yet presented itself.

Rejuvenation. Sources of being and of life. [They] renew. [It] plunges back into its origin and tempers itself anew in its rays. Fountain of that Youth which our mind has displaced by transporting it through its fables.

November […].

Veracious men: or truthful with roughness or brusqueness.

T31.The architectural distinction between vaults, ceilings, lateral size and height is retained. Brain is not replaced with mind.

S1.Source editor’s annotation“Ibid. Aunt V+d+rd.”

T32.Science is rendered knowledge in the contrast with the school’s language. École may suggest a learned or scholastic school; the text does not name one.

T33.The Latin formula is retained. Here, beside in the sun, it appears to mark an observation from life. The gnat’s dance remains sad when solitary; the shift to the cheered spectator when there are several is not normalized.

T34.Étamine is a loosely woven cloth used for sifting or filtering. The 1798 Académie dictionary also records passer par l’étamine for close or rigorous examination. The material image remains in the translation.

S1.Source editor’s annotationThis paragraph and the two that follow are in the hand of Paul de Raynal, who copied them out and which Joubert must have written on the destroyed cover of this new notebook. There is no indication of date.

T35.The damaged French word preserves only the ending le. The possibility règle, rule, is not sufficiently secure to enter the translation; the surviving French fragment remains visible in both languages.

T37.The source editor’s sentence shifts from qui, referring to Raynal, to que, referring back to the paragraphs. The English retains the visible who ... and which construction. Beaunier’s account of their destroyed cover and absent dates applies to this paragraph and the next two, not to the following dated echo sequence.

T36.The French possessive son does not establish the person’s gender. Singular their preserves that uncertainty without naming the deceased. The funeral vehicle remains a chariot, and the coffin remains light.

T309.The day numeral is lost at the left margin. In paragraph 2, the damaged line openings est, aboutit, sensible and the end of rapporte are restored from their visible remnants and context. The alternation notre / votre / nous is printed and retained. In paragraph 3, the word after rendu has only its final rt securely visible at the fold. Fort is plausible, but the lost beginning is not supplied. Damaged openings of voix, immobile and et are restored contextually; the source’s la... and unfinished De l’air construction remain.

T38.The source’s flux and reflux remain related terms, and its shifts from our to your and back to us remain. No acoustic correction is inserted into Joubert’s explanation.

T39.Only the French ending rt is secure in the damaged adjective; fort, strong, is possible but not adopted. The untranslated residue stays visible in both languages. Adossé gives the air a support or backing. The Latin imago vocis means image of the voice; it is retained beside Joubert’s mirror image.

T40.Her follows the feminine Vérité, as elsewhere when truth is personified. The source editor supplies [est], carried over as [is]. Confirmatur means it is confirmed and remains Latin in the text.

T310.The day numeral is lost at the left margin. Damaged line openings in mathématiques, que and l’occasion are restored from their visible remainders and syntax. The supplied [est], the subjectless plural Attendent and the agreement offerts are retained. Confirmatur is printed in roman type.

T41.The feminine plural may refer to truths, but no noun is supplied. The bracketed [They] is the translator’s grammatical addition for the source’s finite Attendent. The application and its four possible conditions remain distinct.

T42.Renouvellent is a finite plural verb; se replonge and se retrempe are singular. The bracketed pronouns make those verbs possible in English without naming the singular subject. The passage combines plunging into a source with tempering in rays, and the English retains that unusual conjunction. Capitalized Youth follows Jouvence.

T43.The marked véraces is kept distinct from the following vrais, truthful. Roughness and brusqueness remain alternatives, not a single generalized bluntness.